The mystery of the intern’s Wolseley lunches got solved one month in. On 8 August, I passed under Piccadilly’s white arches and saw them at one of the restaurant’s marble bars. Two in the afternoon. The stone tomb of a room. The slabs of rock and slabs of brick, all burnished. And the intern, their amber beret; their narrow legs tangling the rails of a gold metal stool. I watched them order an espresso and waited to see whether they would have anything else. They did not.
After my conversation with the managing editor, I had doubled down on my efforts to arrive early at the office and leave late. I gave pointed waves to my colleagues whenever they left at 5 or 6 p.m., emailed updates to the team at eight at night on work finished and work to be done. The more I tried, the more coolly my efforts were received. The managing editor thanked me diligently at each emailed list, but the sign-off was always “Kind regards”—never the initial, the treacly x that punctuated the missives she sent the office at large. I wondered whether the intern, in their direct correspondence with her, was a beneficiary of such x’s. Each morning, I watched them high-five the building’s receptionist on the way into the office, hug the managing editor and wish her a happy whatever day of the week it was. I decided it was very probable she did sign off her emails to them with an x, but no matter how closely I watched them in the office, I could not decipher what it was they knew to pass through it with such ease; to be so universally accepted. In any case, it was impossible to ask. They had avoided me, carefully, since I had failed to reply to their invitation to the pub. On the way back from seeing them in the Wolseley, in an alcove in the Burlington Arcade, I called my mother to complain. The response was not what I wanted.
You can’t start crying every time something goes wrong.
I’m not crying.
You have to learn to take things on the chin better.
I do, that’s why I’m calling you. I need a place to vent that’s not the office.
My mother sighed. I’d feel a lot better if I knew all these ridiculous decisions you’ve been making with your life were at least making you happy.
The next day I watched the intern leave a Post-it note on their screen. It said, Off to raid the fashion cupboard for gems xxx. They returned an hour later, wearing sunglasses and a baby-blue silk coat with a ruffled white bib; holding another, red fur one. The beauty editor shrugged on this last piece, and the picture editor grinned delightedly through her phone at the two of them as they posed for photos. Obviously I’m not keeping this one, the intern said when they had finished laughing. But I talked the lovely bunch downstairs into letting me sell it. I do think the red one is hot, though. Especially on you, darling.
Keep it, said the beauty editor, nodding sagely and stroking her sleeve. From my desk, I could see the managing editor smiling and shaking her head in front of her computer screen: indulgent, amused.
Come to dinner, my flatmate said. I had been watching Netflix on the sofa since Friday night. I looked up at her and she beckoned me to sit up with her right hand. The rings on it jangled lightly. It’s pathetic for me, watching you here when I’ve got to slave away in a shop on a Sunday. My parents are a little farther north. I have to go see them for a thing. They invite friends and family round for dinner once a week but they all work together and end up talking shop, it’s boring. You can keep me company. Also, say you have to be home before eleven so that I can leave with you. Here—a buzz in my back pocket—I’ve texted you the postcode. I’ll meet you on the street outside when my shift is done. Don’t be late.
I had been moping; I did not necessarily want to leave. It was impossible to walk around London now. I felt in no way safe. But up sprung the great new motto of my life: never mind. I stuck some deodorant on, stole roses from the front garden of the building. I tried to be bodiless as I walked; tried to make it so that I could ignore the fact that I was moving myself through the streets. The city happened to me. There approached first a long stretch of terraced housing. It swelled, came upon me, then passed. There came pubs and ill-fitting shirts laughing in the direction of dresses that could not have given any warmth: clouds of tobacco and nicotine; a clutch of beer. Corner shops and grocery stores gave out bottles of wine, packets of crisps. Restaurants flickered—burger joints spat out their orders in four-digit code. Then the pavement pulsed where a flight of stairs sloped down and gave out neon light, and the flash of phones lined up outside it documented a prologue of sorts—a bouncer letting each bumbag and pair of platformed trainers in one by one. After that, things thinned, became uniform. Hedges sprang from the ground and wooden gates appeared. On one side, lambent windows kept crumbling brickwork beautiful: the sensibility of another age; the comfort of tenderly rolled out Persian rugs and midcentury lamps as twenty-first-century triumph. On the other, across from them, great squares of twentieth-century concrete block: flat roofs and plastic window frames, with cars parked outside and a miniature playground stuffed into the front gardens. In front of one of them, I was forced back to myself: my flatmate stood, phone in hand, head bent, scrolling. I tapped her shoulder.
Oh good, she said, and took me to the other side of the road, inside one of the houses done in Queen Anne Revival style.
There was a coatrack by the door. A corridor perforated at three distinct points: it opened up to a staircase at its end and mixed the sounds of a small lavatory, a kitchen, and a living room at its center. I left my shoes by the door and my flatmate guided me into the kitchen, where the entire back wall was taken up by glass doors. Through them, I could see a conservatory, radiant with string lights and holding a circle of people spread over cushions, garden furniture, a velvet sofa. Its woodwork was splintered white and wholly faded; inside, the ash-wood floors took on the same insubstantial quality as the glass. Even the furniture looked like it lacked weight. I hung by the kitchen door, staring at it, until a dark-haired woman looked up from her chopping board and said, Pri! My flatmate hugged her mother, who set down her knife and over her daughter’s shoulder said, Call me Jane. She accepted the stolen roses and took me into her arms: when she drew back, she looked carefully at my face. I hear you’ve been on my daughter’s sofa, she said. But I also hear you’re making do. I nodded. Well, at any rate, she returned briskly to the chopping board, we’ll feed you properly. Did she tell you who’s here? It’s work friends, mostly. Do go and say hello.
My flatmate led me to the glass house and easily found her place where the circle of guests naturally broke for her. She planted a kiss on the cheek of a graying man who smiled and said, Ray, before turning to his daughter.
You, he informed her, have arrived at just the right moment. I’m trying to defend social media in the arts. These two here—he gestured to his left at a man in a leather jacket and a woman with platinum-blond eyebrows—think an iPhone has no place in the work of today.
Good luck, she said, accepting a wineglass. I hate it. Give me 35mm any day. They’re all gallerists, she threw at me. But obviously with loaded families. To this, the circle scowled a little, and widened to accommodate me. I had to turn my body slightly to slot in. Christian makes beautiful films, my flatmate’s father said, though whether for my benefit or in attempt to countermand his daughter’s remark, I wasn’t sure. I’ll be exhibiting them towards the end of the month. And Liza does portraits, exposing multiple rolls of film: all her subjects have more than one face. You might have seen her work before. They both think Instagram is the devil’s scourge. What do you think, dear?
Oh don’t, my flatmate groaned. Leave her alone. I brought her here because all she ever does is sulk on her own. You’ll put her off ever talking to anyone ever again if you start to go on.
My flatmate’s father wore an immaculately ironed shirt. I smoothed the front of my blouse. No, please, I said. I’d love to hear about everyone’s work. I only used Instagram to look at other people, mostly.
The woman with platinum eyebrows looked over to me. You don’t anymore?
There wasn’t much on it, I said. I prefer Twitter. Really, there was only one user that kind of made the app worth it, I kind of knew her. And then she stopped posting.
What were her pictures like?
A little contrived, I said, and paused. One of my legs had started dying but I was sitting between participants and the exchange of opinions was in full flow. If I moved, there was a chance I would break it, and I did not have the authority to do that. The woman with platinum eyebrows had raised them triumphantly at my flatmate’s father, sitting next to me. You see, Ray. He shook his head, but before he could speak, I shook my leg as inconspicuously as I could and intervened. I’m not sure there was anything more contrived about them than any novel I’ve read, or film I’ve watched, I said. Whether those novels or films were better than an Instagram account is probably down to personal taste. I didn’t think much of it as an app either, before I realized her pictures meant she could carry herself beyond . . . I trailed off, slightly unsure of what I meant, and then, because the circle was still looking at me to finish my sentence, I said, the way a good book takes you away from where you are, and as an excuse for getting the pins and needles out of my calf, shifted to pour myself a glass of wine. The blood rushed back. My flatmate’s father nodded.
Well, that’s bollocks if only because a good book should remind you exactly what the conditions of your life or the lives of the people around you are in the first place. In the second, it’s apples and oranges, my flatmate contributed. You’re unlikely to even be talking about the same audiences.
No, no, her father interposed. I think perhaps we might actually be talking about reaching the same audiences in this case. Working with film is expensive, but everyone has a phone. Everyone does everything on their phone—read, watch. Sometimes create. Teresa, have you got your phone?
A woman resembling my flatmate’s mother but with dyed red hair pulled out her phone.
Patrick?
The one who was sitting next to me duly showed his Huawei model. My flatmate looked pained; I saw her bite her tongue. Nevertheless, she turned to her father. We know you’ve got a phone, she said.
Yes, he said. He took over the point. You’re both snobs, he said to the man in the leather jacket and the woman with platinum eyebrows, who only shrugged. If we were thirty years back, you’d be insisting on daguerreotypes. When you exalt the purity of working with the old ways, you both conveniently forget to remember these technologies were invented to spread access and ease, and were discarded only when something that provided better success in that endeavor took their place. Their value now is in how expensive their rarity and relative cumbersomeness has made them. They’re markers of wealth and taste. He seemed to catch my expression out of the corner of his eye and smiled. You look like you want to say something, dear.
I had been biting my top lip. It came out from my teeth and tongue wetly. Come on, my flatmate said. It would be nice to hear you give an actual opinion for a change. Her father dipped his forefinger and thumb into his wine; flicked it across the room at her. Rude little girl—but he was smiling. Don’t mind her, she takes after me. Please go on.
This was not encouraging. At my flatmate’s comment, I thought of what the art director had said about me regurgitating headlines, and the memory made me less confident about the value of what I wanted to say. But everyone in the circle had turned towards me, and the uniform shift meant that, at last, I could position myself comfortably. I hedged.
I work at a magazine. Actually, it’s quite a fatuous thing, but it’s run on prestige and wealth and class. I was just thinking—
Quietly, my flatmate breathed, A shocking notion. Her father flicked more wine at her. Some of it went sideways and landed on my blouse. I resumed.
They venerate tradition and the past, but they use new tech to bring it into the present and make it shinier than it was. They retouched an archival page to show in the new issue week before last. They filter everything and then they share it on social media. Effectively, the use of all that new tech becomes a marker of wealth and taste, as you say.
Oh fuck the money, the man in the leather jacket said, bored. It’s about the quality of the thing. And if you compare my films to the crap a consumer mag puts out, he said warningly to my flatmate’s father, I’ll withdraw my commission and you won’t see me again.
It was as though I hadn’t spoken. No one considered my point. I shrank. My flatmate’s father held up his palms, into which my flatmate’s mother deposited a platter of meze. Having not noticed her advance, he fumbled—his attention veered. I tried to help him, and in shifting my position, noticed a tower of orange squares reflected in the roof of the conservatory’s glass. I followed the reflection to its source—beyond the back garden, sequences of high-rises; further back, the Grenfell Tower, and the two-year-old damage from the fire that claimed it, sheathed. A few weeks previously, the government had released a letter promising to take responsibility for the site and to erect a memorial, though it remained unclear how it planned to account for the state negligence which had killed or dispossessed its inhabitants in the first place.
I think, my flatmate’s mother said softly, finding her seat and doling out food, quite apart from the fact that you value film for its flaws, in the same way people value, say, vinyl for that little muffled scratch under each song, I think she’s the only one who’s got a clue. Now—she smiled at me—what kept you coming back to your friend’s Instagram?
She wasn’t exactly my friend, I muttered, I’m not sure. I just did. But the answer sounded pitiable even to me, so I tried again: I wanted to know what would happen in her life next, and what that would look like. I paused. I wanted to know where she had been.
Quite right, my flatmate’s mother said. Now let’s talk about something else. I took a sip of my wine and repeated the conversation back to myself, but with wittier, more profound lines where my parts were. And the meze, and the coatrack; the conservatory and its array of mismatched chairs.
I’ve been thinking of doing a short loop, the man with the Huawei phone said, of blood running down Downing Street. You could project it on their walls, you know? Would you sponsor that? Would only take a few hundred quid. I’ll make sure to acknowledge you. The reach on Twitter would be huge.
I excused myself to go to the bathroom.
The view directly across from the cistern was a shelf built into the wall, full of Molton Brown products. They were elegant in their semitransparent colored bottles, assembled in sets: shampoo and conditioner, hand soap and hand cream, bath oil and shower gel—they had names like Suede Orris or Oudh Accord. When I washed my hands and came away perfumed, refreshed, I felt like a god. I imagined what kind of a life it would be, to smell expensively of bergamot as a simple consequence of having taken a piss. My flatmate’s mother found me sniffing the many rows of toiletries.
You were gone for a while, she said. I apologized, replaced the cap on the Sea Fennel body lotion. She led me to a colorless bedroom. A mirror fitted to the expanse of the west wall reflected the white sheets, white furniture and ceramics, LED lights; doubled it all and threw it back. There were two rooms. She looked at the reflected one for a moment, then fixed a vase of flowers on the nightstand according to how it looked in the glass. Please sit, she said, but I could not see how. I was wearing indigo-blue jeans. It seemed inescapable that they would stain the duvet, or the cream-colored leather on the chair in front of the vanity table. I could have tied my cardigan around my waist, but still I would have worried about disordering the bed, or leaving a dent in the seat whose cushion rose so perfectly upwards. I stayed where I was. She herself remained standing and looked steadily at me.
It’s not too hard on that sofa? My daughter can be very untidy.
It’s fine, I said. It’s okay. It’s fine.
Are you sure? If I were your mother, I’d be insisting you come home immediately.
Yes. Mine is.
My flatmate’s mother tipped her head. So why don’t you?
I just—I gasped, and broke. Everything came in great, juddering breaths. I probably should. I don’t know what I’m going to do because I don’t have a contract and I thought it would be better if I left academia and got a real-world job and I thought I’d end up with a salary and a flat, and that I would have friends and a life, but when I’m not in the office I spend all my time alone and worrying about whether they’ll want to keep me, and I’m really fucking sick of not having a room of my own, and sleeping on a sofa, I mean, I know I’m not homeless and there are bigger problems in the world, and you’re right, I can go and stay with my parents for a bit if I have to, but why should I, when did it become ridiculous to think that a stable economy and a fair housing market were reasonable expectations? I really think growing up in the middle of a financial crash traumatized a lot of my generation and skewed our perception of what we’re allowed to ask for. You know?
At this point I couldn’t see for clumps of running mascara. I felt ridiculous almost as soon as my mouth closed. My flatmate’s mother disappeared from my line of sight briefly, then returned with tissues. I blew my nose and did my best to stop crying. I tried to laugh instead and gestured at my own ridiculousness.
Something about your generation I’ve noticed, she said not unkindly once I had fallen silent, is that you give up very easily. You seem to expect things to turn out perfectly at first try. I had to work very hard—she looked briefly at the mirror—to end up in this house.
I’m not saying I don’t want to work hard, I said, stung. I do work very hard.
No, no, I didn’t mean to imply otherwise, she said at once, laying a hand on my arm. I just meant that I see a lot of people your age expecting far more than we ever did, and on a much quicker timeline. Even though you’ve got so much more of an advantage than I ever did. I think it might be because of how freely available the image of a glamorous lifestyle is on your phones now. I catch a glimpse of Priscilla’s phone now and again over her shoulder, and you all seem to be very adept at making your lives look far more interesting than they have any right to be. The truth is, most days are inexhaustibly dull and full of striving. I did my share of boring, low-wage administrative jobs and living in bedsits, or on friends’ floors as well. I’m sure your peers do, too, they just don’t post about it. And then, because of a few get-rich-quick success stories, and the lack of representation around how much work it usually does take to attain any kind of achievement, a sort of entitlement gets bred.
That might be true, I conceded. But I didn’t really mean that. I don’t want anything glamorous, I just want normal things. At least you didn’t feel deranged for thinking you might afford a house one day.
Honestly, she said, I didn’t think about it. I rented run-down flats with friends for years. My husband and I scraped to buy the first house we did because we wanted Priscilla to have a nice room. I think until she came along, I sort of . . . waited to see how things would turn out.
I don’t think I can do that, I whispered.
She cocked her head. Why?
I looked at my feet. You have a very beautiful home, I said finally. I think you should have been able to go through the early stages of your adulthood secure in the knowledge you would end up in it.
When I looked up, my flatmate’s mother seemed to have exhaled. Her body softened. There’s a face wash in the bathroom, petal, she said. You can clean that makeup off a little. When you feel better, come downstairs and have some food and wine. She led me to an en suite, where on the sink was another bottle from Molton Brown. I lathered my face and tried not to think beyond the smell of mandarin and clary sage. Back downstairs, the others had split to form several smaller groups which talked among themselves: the only available seat was next to the man who had pulled out the Huawei phone. I smiled briefly at him and felt self-conscious at my newly bare face. He smiled back: we rocked, very slightly, towards and away from each other, each taking small repositories of breath—the pause for thought before a conversation stretched out for eternity until my embarrassment overtook me, and I made my confession: I’m not very good with names. I forgot it again as soon as he told me.
The next morning on the way in to work I stopped by Regent Street, where Molton Brown had a boutique, and forgoing all thought of lunch for a few days, bought the Mandarin & Clary Sage face wash for myself.
Out on the square in front of the office, the builders had unionized. This came as a shock to all of us because none of us had ever considered that they may have felt any kind of discontent. Beyond the cigarette breaks and shouted banter we observed in passing, we knew nothing of their circumstances, only that one morning, dozens of them—far more than I would have guessed—were suddenly marching up and down the thoroughfare and abandoning their drills. From my window, I could see the scurrying of miniature neon jackets, holding banners and shouting.
Oh, the intern breathed in the same tone they used to show the office cat videos. They look so funny.
They’re going to disturb the tents, the art director said, without looking up from her screen.
What? I asked.
Her eyes did not flicker from the screen. They’re going to disturb the homeless in the garden outside, someone should tell them.
I did not understand what she meant until I did a coffee run, and on my way back, the combined effects of the strike and the torn-up walkway forced me onto the green. While I’d been gone, the protest had circled back to the front of the square, but it had not interrupted the ordinances of those on their lunch break. The builders could usually have been found reclining alongside various office workers anyway, and I could easily picture myself, in two hours, doing exactly what those eating triangle sandwiches were doing now: headphones in, neck bent towards a screen or a book, or else just the grass.
I balanced the coffees in their cardboard tray. Rather than tangle myself up in the crowd again, I walked the perimeter of the garden towards the back gate. Near it, a row of muddy blue tents lined up with their backs to the curlicue iron railing. A German shepherd burrowed its nose disconsolately into the grass. It whined. Once I was aware of it, it was impossible to unhear—to the sound of protesting builders, I now added a high-pitched whistle.
I had been working at the magazine for a month. How had I not noticed this before? Claustrophobia began to set in. I wanted to get back to the benign white wood of my desk, but that impulse was the very thing I was trying to cull in myself. I felt my breathing increase. The tents had not been there in July, I was sure, but I had not noticed their arrival either. How long had I been negligent for? There was chaos in the square’s garden, and I, trying to recover my equilibrium, gripped the coffees, swayed lightly where I stood until a man in jeans and a white T-shirt asked me whether I was okay. I nodded. I wanted to ask whether there was anything I could do for him, but he was the one who gave me a pat on the back, asked whether I would like some water. When I shook my head, he retreated; sat in front of one of the tents and tipped the bottle he was holding towards the mouth of the fatigued beast instead, massaging its flanks. I ran back towards the office.
Oh, good, the associate editor said, accepting her matcha. Look, listen, you’re young. Tell me if you recognize this at all. She fumbled with her phone until some sound began to play from it, much too low to hear. I hummed perfunctorily while she jabbed the screen.
You know, it might have just passed you by, or it might not have, but I want to see whether you like it even if you haven’t heard it, you know?
I had never seen someone have so much trouble with their phone. The sound jerked up and down: I strained for a few guitar chords—they pulled back into the phone’s speakers and then dispensed again, breaking the air-conditioned calm of the office. Once I recognized the song, I frowned.
You see, it was quite popular in the nineties, the associate editor said, not looking at me, but at the row of holes at the bottom of her phone, as though she could see the sound coming out of it. He was a total heartthrob. Not that he lived up to his image in person, you know, but then I met him not long after his wife left him and he was saddled with this baby he had absolutely no clue what to do with, and the baby had the same name as the wife, which really couldn’t have been helpful. No idea why he named the child that. I imagine he never did get therapy for the whole ordeal, he probably thought writing this song when she left him was enough. And of course, I was there to help him—
I love this song, the features editor said.
Yes, me too. It was always best to hear it in person, of course, this is terrible. He used to sing it to me, which I didn’t quite appreciate, you know, him singing a song about his ex-wife to me, while we were . . . Well, anyway, the point is—she looked up from the phone, suddenly focused—his wife was quite beautiful. After she left him, she circled around society for a bit, and she graced our pages a handful of times. Now, of course, there’s this nostalgia for the nineties with the younger generation and what have you, I’ve heard this song quite a bit. His daughter’s agreed to do a fashion shoot for us and we’ll dress her up in McQueen and vintage Galliano and whatever else—it’s quite clever, no? The whole thing about finding fame the song talks about: we’re going to style her as this nineties starlet. She’s a lovely little thing. She looks so much like her mother: we’ve emulated a lot of the looks she was wearing in the back issues for this. It’s good, it’ll work for older readers, and it’ll tap into all those girls like you. Anyway, do you know the song?
Yes, I said. I was back on South Parks Road in Oxford; I was in my thin red dress, holding a bottle of champagne. I was googling Ghislane’s name. The smell of cut grass.
It’s fabulous, isn’t it?
Yes.
The last time I’d worn the dress had been the night of the parties held by the English faculty and my neighbor’s college. It had been tossed into a carrier bag for the charity shop when I was getting rid of my things during the last days of my teaching post. I wanted it back.
She hit pause on her phone. The sound stopped. When you’ve done all the page furniture and you’ve put in all the details, run it past me. I don’t want her father calling me at all hours, he’s less interesting than he used to be.
Yes, I said. Are you still living in the Berkeley?
No, she groused, once more absorbed in her phone. I’m doing Claridge’s now. Make the Thames Water bastards pay.
The strike action outside the office and around the square took a day to resolve itself—or at least, by the following morning, the square was empty. There was no one to hose down the fine layer of dust that spread over the remaining pavement, nearby windows, the grass and blue tents. The square had acquired a ghoulish, chalky calm which regular passersby seemed to revel in: the absence of drills, of shouted Polish or cockney, more room in the thoroughfare for pedestrians to flit between each bus and car. The place was demolished, but more women than ever flocked towards the revolving doors, holding magazines and shopping bags while they posed for photos. The quiet stretched out for a week. Into this, the photos of Ghislane came, with an accompanying list detailing the items she wore, where they came from, and how much they cost.
Have you read this? the picture editor volleyed over her iMac, holding up a forest-green book with pink lettering. It’s great. It’s like this manifesto for women who want to succeed, but it completely turns the idea on its head. It’s not prescriptive: “this is how you get the good life,” bit by bit. It’s more about life not being linear, self-care, reasonable goals, and feeling accomplished in yourself without external validation. The author says success is innate, it’s always there, in the person you are, not outside you in the arbitrary things you want to achieve. She’s really honest in it, she talks a lot about her personal privilege and all her ups and downs. I think you’d like it.
I grimaced; looked, instead, at my screen. The opening shot was of Ghislane against an olive background, in a thin leather bralette and an equally thin matching pencil skirt. Someone had slicked her hair into one uniform ponytail: two front pieces of hair curtained her face in an artful curve; her makeup was calculatedly bare, save for a brickish-red smear of lipstick. She had been shot twisting a white banner around her body onto which someone had scrawled in deliberately jagged text YES TO THE REVOLUTION.
I thought she was going to be shot in context of her dad’s song? I frowned.
The picture editor walked round to look at the photos. Yeah, she didn’t like the association. It’s a shame, I love that song. But she said she wanted something more in tune with how women want to be portrayed today, and something about existing in her own right.
It’s a protest photo shoot? I could not stymie my incredulity.
Yeah. You should have seen the stroke she gave wardrobe, insisting on a last-minute change to the entire concept. Actually, she gave everyone a stroke, we almost didn’t get His Majesty’s approval on it. But I like it, the picture editor said, cocking her head as though a new angle would impart a sense of profundity on Ghislane’s stomach, peeking out from between the white sheet and leather clothes. It’s a laugh after all that calamity we had going on with the builders yesterday. Plus it’s better than the usual high-couture bollocks. She looks very sexy. They made a point of making sure the photographer was a woman, and it was the photographer who came up with the banners, actually, because she wanted her to feel powerful—I think there was a whole conversation about encouraging a sense of play and autonomy with how she was using the props. Empowerment, and all that. Anyway, this book, I finished it last night and—
I titled the page “Exist to Resist” and moved to the next image. I thought about myself, walking in circles around my room in Bradmore Road, reading bits of Pater in order to make sense of Ghislane’s Instagram. Nothing had changed. Now it was Ghislane on an InDesign document, against an olive background, wearing a silvery, sheer slip dress, waving a white flag, and me inputting text to make sense of her. I typed: Sheer satin slip dress, stylist’s own. Now it was her, in low-slung trousers and a halter neck, ready to be sent to print. I typed: Rage against the machine. Now, she had Chanel Rouge Noir on her nails and two thin braids on either side of her face. I made to stick more nonsense words in and came up short. Do the words even matter? I murmured absently. Does anyone read them?
Try “The future is female,” the picture editor said. I typed it in. Before I got to the “m” in “female” the script disappeared off the page. Oh, it doesn’t fit, she said, and I could hear she was disappointed. Anyway, she continued, have you read it? The author’s coming for a talk next month and I think I’m going to go. You might be interested, too.
I stared at the screen.
I knew her, I said finally. Then corrected myself—That’s not true, I didn’t know her, but she was around when I was a research assistant.
At Oxford?
Yes.
You never talk about your old job. Do you miss it?
I miss the place. I miss the town. Or belonging to it. I’m not sure what it would be like to go back now. None of my things are there. I reflected. None of my things are here, either.
Unusually for the magazine, in some of the pictures Ghislane was smiling. In one, she was bent forward with her hands on her knees, mid-laughter. The picture editor tapped the screen. What about her? A few people here know her dad, and they say he’s a real relic. She seems very now, though, doesn’t she? She’s been doing interviews here and there and she makes it look so easy; all these young girls do. I suppose it feels like she’s been around forever because of her dad’s song, though, which must be hard. But she’s got the whole activist, low-key fashion plate, not really fixed in one area, doing loads of stuff at one time thing going on. My daughter’s a few years younger than you both and she says she’s going to have a career like that. Did Ghislane do that sort of stuff when you knew her?
I don’t know. She was on Instagram a lot, I sighed. Actually, she looked nothing like how she does in these photos. She was someone else to me then. She was a student. I felt superior to her. It wasn’t even that long ago.
I couldn’t say any more.
We tried tracking her social media presence, the picture editor said awkwardly, she’s doing this thing where she archives each of her photos before the next one goes up. So we have to get it all from secondhand sources and little fan accounts. It doesn’t make us look great when we have to credit it. Could you reach out to her?
I shifted uneasily, and the picture editor nodded. It’s really easy to fall out of touch now, isn’t it? Although when I think about it, it’s not any more common than it used to be, there’s just less of an excuse now. Everyone takes offense more readily if you leave them on read.
Ghislane’s face pouted at me from the screen. The only yellow boxes the art director had put in were on the background, indicating where lighting and tone should be fixed; stray cables taken out. I’ll try emailing her, I said, then looked at the green-and-pink book still on the picture editor’s desk. I read that in June. I don’t know how much it did for me.
I walked round so that I could look at the inside cover, where a well-lit photo of the author, young, athletic, tawny, adorned the tasteful heavy jacketing. I flicked through it and remembered what it was about the book that had irked me so much. It was easy, I had said to my flatmate in June, to envision the idea of success as innate when nothing in the setup of your life would ever allow you to fall short of a good one. The author had been financially comfortable since birth; now owned London property; was conventionally beautiful, and expensively educated. She suffered the occasional wobble in her mental health, but then, who didn’t? I could not inherently fault her for any of these things. But the idea of her profiting from having written a book about how to attain something she had never had to work for upset me, still.
The picture editor watched me turn the pages in silence, confused. I gave her a good-humored shrug. On my way back to my desk, I caught sight of the intern, eating cashews and squinting at something in front of them. Somehow, perhaps because of the mop of blond curls on their head, the effect was cherubic. When the beauty editor, at the desk across from them, caught their eye, they grinned before resuming their work.
Actually, I said, I would like to go to that talk.
You said it didn’t do anything for you, the picture editor laughed. I forced myself to smile.
I probably read it in too much of a rush the first time. I’ll try it again.
She looked unconvinced.
After the stainless white of my flatmate’s parents’ house, the building in which she lived yellowed further in my eyes. One working week on from their dinner, on Friday, I walked from the office to Barons Court. The sweat that had accumulated under my arms, that had made the gap between my sandals and my feet slippery and coiled into my hair, made the empty, aged dirtiness of the lobby even more manifest. I had taken ten minutes to lie on a patch of grass in Hyde Park and remained itchy while walking up the stairs; putting the key into the door; turning it; letting myself in. I saw, scribbled and left on the mantelpiece: Back Sunday night. I began to breathe a little more freely, until I went to take a shower. My flatmate had neglected the cleaning rota, and the bathroom floor looked filthier than I was. I rose, on instinct, to tread it on tiptoe, and resigned myself to the dry chalk of rubber gloves and dull bleach headache. By the time I was able to shower my muscles ached and nothing felt right—hot water seemed only to make me sweat more, to make things worse; cold water was uncomfortable, did nothing to shift the layer of grime I felt prickling into my skin. Everything was wrong. I finished washing and went to her bed, dragged myself into it, did not come out until Sunday afternoon. I did nothing, except occasionally use the toilet or eat. My phone illuminated every so often on the pillow next to me—flashed news updates, the date, the time: kept me somewhat in the world. When my flatmate was due back, I took another shower; massaged my face with the Molton Brown clary sage wash.
Over the weekend, her bedroom had induced odd pity in me. It was furnished with the same cheap wood the landlord had left in the living room and light, ineffectual curtains, but she had gone to great lengths to inject some glamour. Heavy cardboard bags from Selfridges and Liberty were arranged by the mirror, all of them empty. The wardrobe had been wrapped in fairy lights; there was a table covered in MAC cosmetics and scented candles. Like her mother, my flatmate had pushed the bed to the center of the back wall opposite the door so that it dominated the room. Everything else was in orbit around it. There were table mirrors propped up on nearly every available flat space, though with less elegance than I had seen in her mother’s house the previous weekend: Polaroid photos and small potted plants surrounded them. I made the bed and stacked up one frilly cushion on top of the next. My flatmate was in her late twenties, but I could picture what she must have been like as a teenager by her room. I let myself out; crossed the two steps between the corridor and the kitchen, which was littered with its usual jewelry-making tools and sparse, unsentimental array of pasta, store-bought pesto, a cheap plastic kettle. I might have crossed into a different flat. I felt quite tenderly towards her when she returned.
You look like shit, she informed me. Here, come help.
The tenderness disappeared. She was dragging a cluster of reusable bags. They bulged by her knees. I took four from her.
What’s all this?
Tins.
Tins?
I could feel her irritation. Yes, tins. The kitchen was small enough to make the floor an island of Waitrose plastic. I stepped gingerly around the green.
Tins of what?
She pulled out chopped tomatoes, chickpeas, soup. Do you know what? she mused, we could actually stack them on the open shelves, they’re so kitsch they’re almost aesthetic. The tins began to go up in pyramids against the kitchen’s dirty blue walls. Grudgingly, I allowed that the combination of precious metals and gems on the countertops against the delicate illustrations of tuna, the syrup and peaches, the white sans-serif Heinz logo on duck-egg blue, was quite evocative.
You could print a few pictures of Warhol, I mused. Find some really nice frames and prop them up against all this.
That might be taking the piss, my flatmate said, leaning back from her iPhone and taking a photo of the finished shelf. I mean, these are doomsday measures in the end. She bit the inside of her cheek and tried a square crop.
I’m sorry, what?
She began to filter one of the photos. Yellowhammer leak? All over the papers this morning? The idiocy of our government will kill us all? Hello? Do you not read the news? I raised my eyebrows until she noticed. I’m not posting this, she said defensively. It’s just for memories a few years down the line. She looked briefly at the stacked shelf. And I’m not stupid, I’m only half serious. But better safe than sorry. Austerity has been bad enough these past few years anyway. Anyway, if you eat a tin, replace a tin, okay?
I began snatching up the bags she had left littered on the floor, folding them with exaggerated pointedness. You forgot to clean the bathroom, I said. It’s not a big deal but I ended up having to do it after I got home from work stressed.
She was unmoved; adjusted a tin of Ambrosia Devon custard so that the blue-and-white house in the middle of the field lined up dead center with the tin below it. Eventually, I heard her blow out a Sorry, and as she passed on her way out a murmured, It’s my bloody bathroom anyway.
After she had gone into her bedroom, I took the sheets from the drawer they had been stuffed in at the beginning of summer: set them to wash on a warm, gentle cycle with plenty of fabric softener, and then stretched them across a drying rack so that they filled the living room. I gathered my own bundle of possessions out of my suitcase and arranged them in and around the cabinet drawers—a small stack of books, my toiletry bag, my clothes. When the sheets were dry, I ironed them so that they patterned in squares: each crease brought up crisp, uniform tents. I tucked and spread until the slump of the sofa was obscured by cotton, plumped the pillows at one end and smoothed a thin blanket down just below them. I set my bag down and lined up my two pairs of shoes on the floor at the opposite end of the pillows, and in the morning, I did not dismantle my bed. I made it up perfectly, left a couple of books arranged neatly on it, and dared anyone disturb what I had made for myself.
On 26 August, I had to ask whether I still had a job.
I had been DMing Ghislane. Instagram. I was days into the process and had finally managed as far as Dear Ghi, before an automated email lit up at the top of my phone and informed me that my IT contract was due to expire unless renewed by my line manager. I had been receiving these emails daily: we had started at fourteen days, gone to ten, down to nine, and now the perfectly round number of a week.
It was one of the rare days that the Editor was in. I saw the managing editor taking him through the coming issue’s flat plan; him, eyeing a croissant she had left untouched on her desk. There are more around the corner, she told him, and he declined. He was working on losing what he called his “relaunch paunch”; a year’s worth of breakfasts at Claridge’s: the hard work of rehabilitating the image of the magazine. I waited until he had retreated into his office and approached.
Why don’t we regroup? the managing director smiled once I had stuttered my way to the point. I’ll get back to you with availability. We can talk about how you’re getting on. How does that sound?
It sounded terrible. I smiled back and said thank you.
After this, the message to Ghislane wrote itself in minutes. It said, you probably don’t remember me; and, the photos are *so* empowering and strong; and really good to see you’ve landed on your feet so quickly; and was wondering if I could put you in touch with the picture editor here for some usable personal shots; and would love to hear how you’ve been more generally; maybe have lunch? Warm wishes—
I sent it without reading it back.
Eventually, September stuffed, inflated itself into the air, and when the rain came, it was not with any commitment or delight.
Because of how consistently it rained, everything stayed green. August was still fresh enough that I could wish it back from the previous week; could ease out a thousand different ways to spend my body no longer possible. I had been waiting for a flat of my own; I had been waiting for my life, as I wanted it. To go wild swimming in the ponds in Hampstead; to shop for fistfuls of cheap vine-ripened tomatoes and cook them in the evenings with a glass of red wine. To wear thin, gauzy white; read, and eat Cornish ice cream. To have hot, hazy evenings in a cinema or a café, and then the last few hours of daylight in garden squares, stretched out in dwindling sun. But it was September now. Days shortened, went cold. When my phone dispensed photos from the House of Commons of an MP lounging across the bench, for an unwitting moment I felt seen, before I remembered to apply context and become morally outraged.
The true form of things was the office, now oddly luminescent in its whiteness against the gradually graying weather; the sudden appearance of dun-colored coats and jumpers. My contract, extended for two more months. The managing editor, earnest: After that, your probation period will be up and I don’t think we’ll be moving forward, but we’re so proud of how much you’ve grown. I’m sure you’ll have no trouble finding something else.
I felt nothing. Earlier that day, the senior editor had boomed over his desk: News? And the features team: Twenty-one MPs had the whip removed. To which the senior editor shook his head—We can’t do anything sexy with that.
It took two weeks for Ghislane to respond. Each time my phone gave out the descending tone that signaled a notification, my heart did a corresponding drop. When, on 9 September, I saw her name beneath the gray banner, I flipped my phone over so violently it dropped to the floor. I left it there for twenty minutes until the art director came back from her lunch break and put it back on my desk.
Oh, your screen will want fixing. Did that happen just now? What’s that from Ghislane?
The picture editor perked up opposite me. You emailed her?
I swallowed. No, direct messaged. Er—I tapped gingerly around splinters—she says . . . Thanks for getting in touch. Please forward this address to your picture editor. Smiley face. I read out the email address she had provided. I stared at my phone. There was nothing on my Instagram—no profile picture or posts. Only my username. It was likely she had, in fact, forgotten who I was. The picture editor asked me to repeat the address so that she could write it down, and so I read the message out again, all two lines of it, and felt my mouth go numb.
Very good of her, the art director said to the picture editor.
Yes, she seems the sort.
I could feel the spit pooling under my tongue. They waited for me to agree.
By the time Parliament was adjourned, I could not delude any of the drudgery of my work into the beauty of summer days. The builders had come back with their accompanying din: bits of the pavement returned, looking no different to what they had been before, and construction work began in the reception area of the building itself, prompting the associate editor into a feral hysteria. It rained incessantly. Public transport was sodden with it, and packed; I kept losing umbrellas, my shoes soaked through, my books wrinkled, my coat began to smell. I started and ended most of my days wet. For all of this I should have spent the month screaming, but the intern’s cheerful face when they walked in each morning kept my voice low. I cried frequently on the sofa.
The picture editor made good on her suggestion to attend the talk on success. I followed her into the building’s first-floor boardroom, where folding chairs had been locked into perfect rows and tables pushed against the perimeter. On each of them, pyramids of the speaker’s book were stacked now towards the front of the table, now back, so that vases of flowers and complimentary mugs with a Beckett quote on them wove between. The intern was there, exchanging ten-pound notes for a copy of the book and a customary penny. There was an admirable smoothness to the way their hands switched between the cashbox and each book dispensed. I watched them. They smiled perfunctorily at me.
I sat in the front row and regretted it. The speaker was luminously beautiful, raised slightly above us on a barstool. Despite how much I had come to hate her book, it was impossible not to like her. She spoke with enthusiasm and open sincerity: she asked for the opinions and questions of the room with a genuine belief that knowing them was the key to becoming a better person.
I want this to be more of a conversation than a talk, if that’s all right, she said, tucking strands of hair behind her ears. Because I think we all have very different measures for what constitutes a success story and I don’t necessarily feel I have a right to sit and preach to you about how I’ve achieved my own. Often, the very insecurities we have about ourselves are the things other people admire about us. I know that every time I look at a woman telling me about all the things she thinks she’s done wrong in life, a part of me starts despairing and thinking, But you’re perfect. At the same time, she said warningly, although it’s important to acknowledge that impulse, I always try to turn the volume down on it. It’s impossible to know another person’s pain, and I really feel no one has a right to judge anyone else. Particularly women. I think men already spend enough of their time judging us, so why would we make it any easier on them? Let’s all just make a commitment to try to be kind to each other in this room, and to keep being kind even after we’ve left it. So. Would anyone like to kick us off?
There was a silence, a shuffling around the room, and then eventually someone spoke up and said, I really liked how in your book, you talked about your thirties not being at all like how you thought they’d be, and that it was liberating to let that image of yourself go in your forties. I was just wondering whether you still keep any kind of life goals for yourself generally, or whether you’ve completely given up on that as a concept.
The speaker laughed. Um, so I don’t want to be presumptuous in thinking that you’ve all read the book, she said. So I’ll quickly explain. I got married in my late twenties and I thought my thirties would basically look like a fifties sitcom, or a nineties one at least, where I’d stay with my husband, we’d buy a house, I’d experience some kind of career progression—and also, I’d written a book that I thought I’d publish and acquire a glowing reputation as a famous novelist. She made sure to laugh at herself. But midway through my thirties, my husband divorced me because I didn’t want children, which actually upset some conservatively minded people in my life who I thought I was quite close with. I got fired from my job, and I was told on no less than twenty-six occasions that my novel wasn’t really much good. Essentially, every system and mechanism I’d used to check in on myself with and see whether I was “doing” life right fell apart, and I had to learn to feel a sense of accomplishment and seek rewards from something other than a relationship, or a job, or material wealth, or any of the other usual stuff we’re told will make us happy but which actually keeps us in the grip of the patriarchy.
The room clucked sympathetically.
Happiness is something you decide for yourself, she continued. And everyone gets there in the end. I’ve just bought a house with my boyfriend, but will I marry him? Not sure. I don’t think either of us needs the conventional institution of marriage to make each other happy. We can be together and happy for the rest of our lives in our own way. We have a partnership. The main thing has been shifting my attitude so that my personal and professional success is now a thing I think of as innately within me, and achievable at any given moment. It’s been very liberating. I don’t judge myself by anyone else’s standards anymore. She manufactured a pause by gathering her well-cut hair into a low-slung bun and adjusting her trousers so that the seam ran down her leg in a straight line. Then she addressed the person who had asked the first question.
Do I still keep any life goals for myself? the speaker mused, looking towards the ceiling. She tapped her heel against her stool. I mean, yes, she said finally. I think that’s important in that it provides me with a sense of discipline. They can be as small as—I will walk the dog today, or I will write however many pages. And then I’ll let myself eat a tub of hummus as a reward. The room laughed. But in a grander scheme, not really, I guess, not anymore. I keep a set of basic principles for myself, like, try not to be a dick, don’t intentionally hurt anyone, shop sustainably. And the rest . . . what will be will be. But I think, if you do want to keep life goals for yourself, she added, that’s fine. Maybe just be flexible with them, you know? If you don’t get there by a certain age, just push the deadline back a little. And decide what those goals will add to your life. Because, okay, a life goal of raising happy kids, or feeling empowered is great. But losing those extra ten pounds or learning that language just so that you can be a more perfect accoutrement for a society that won’t even value your skills and literally makes money off your self-doubt is crazy.
There was a round of applause. I put my hands together lightly.
Another hand went up. Could you talk a little more about the tyranny of looking perfect and being perfect? a perfectly beautiful woman asked. Especially in a social sense? For example, I love the bit in your book where you say that feminism should only be used to empower other women rather than to put them down.
That was a quote, the speaker said, nodding. A very wise one, I think. Yes. I think it’s okay for us all to make mistakes and to be a bit messy, and to sometimes miss the mark. We’re all human. I think the internet has made it very difficult to be a nuanced, complicated, authentic self.
Don’t you think, I heard myself saying, and hating it, that it’s important to be held accountable if what you’re doing is wrong? For example, a lot of feminism has been co-opted into a marketable luxury, or made to seem like a club whose membership is dictated by unequal wealth distribution and unequal beauty standards. It’s no longer just a basic premise for society to try and adjust itself to and function on, like . . . I searched my brain. The weather, I finished lamely.
Someone coughed. The room began to shrink down on me. The speaker continued smiling at me, as though expecting me to go on, and so I did. What would you say to women who have used feminism as a “brand” to market diet products, thousand-dollar T-shirts, and exclusive club memberships with?
The sun seemed to radiate out of the speaker’s face. She remained utterly calm, taking time to select her words with care. I would say even feminists sometimes fail at feminism, she said finally. And yes, it’s very important that we examine any hypocrisy within the movement. That being said, I think it’s also crucial to remember that we don’t live in a utopia where feminism can gain importance and thrive if it isn’t propped up by the major frameworks in modern-day society—and for the time being, one of those is a market economy.
But—this came out desperately, I struggled to adjust the pitch of my voice to her cool, her calm—surely the goal of the movement is to prop up major frameworks in society, rather than to be propped up by them?
Well, sure, the speaker said. But it’s a journey, right? First you infiltrate them. Then you spark a revolution from within. Then world domination. She winked. The room laughed. Thank you. The speaker smiled at me. That was a very interesting point. I smiled back and felt like a toad assaulting a princess; wanted desperately to go back in time and clamp my mouth shut. I felt judged by the women in the audience around me; I felt that it would reflect better on my character if the speaker, with her reasonableness, with her constant niceness and luminous skin, liked me.
What would you say the best way to cope with failure is? someone else asked.
Um, breathe, the speaker said. Do whatever you need to do to get through it. Yoga? Do it. Packet of biscuits? Eat it. Ignore calls for a week? It’s your right. Do it knowing that it’s temporary, and tomorrow is another day.
What’s the best thing writing this book has taught you? I asked, wanting desperately to save face.
That’s an excellent question, she beamed. I think that everything is relative. As I’ve been doing this tour, I’ve listened to a lot of people talk about their lives, and definitely the best thing it’s taught me is a kind of self-awareness. For example, before writing this book, I think I was blind to a lot of the structural privilege in my life. You know, I had fairly middle-class parents, and I went to boarding school, and I’m a thin, white woman. All of that, I gradually understood and came to terms with, and now I definitely want to use my voice to help lift others, if that’s in my power. But I think, also, the best people I’ve spoken to know that even when you’re successful, pain is pain, no matter how it happens, or who it happens to. You know, heartbreak is heartbreak. Loss is loss. We all just need to support each other and love each other.
There was another round of applause.
Okay, I think that’s enough of me up here, she said. Um, I’ll be at the back of the room signing copies of the book if anyone wants one, or if you just want a chat, that’s fine too. I just want to close with a quote from Carl Jung, which I have actually had printed on this T-shirt, she said winking at me and opening her blazer briefly. I am not what happened to me, she read out, I am what I choose to become.
On my way out, I knocked one of the Beckett mugs into my bag and placed it visibly on top of one of the first-floor bins.
The iMac screen flashed new copy at me when I got back to my desk. I printed the page.
What is it?
The art director raised an eyebrow. Climate protests are sexy.
And where are the photos?
Nonexistent. We’ve pulled some sustainable couture for the society protesters to march in, we’re shooting them wearing it—the art director raised her hands and made exaggerated air quotes—in the streets, as it were.
How can couture be sustainable?
It’s made for life.
Yes, but who actually wears it in real life?
The art director tapped her fingers to her temple and rolled her eyes. I tried again.
What’s with all the protests in this issue?
Rehabilitation. The great and the good of society with a capital S can no longer survive as good-looking layabouts. There are enough name-drops in that article to sink a yacht, she grinned.
I began to read out loud from the sheets. When the strikes are happening, it’s never about apportioning blame, says one privately educated, Oxbridge grad. Attendees look for systemic rather than personal change, and remain unflustered by allegations of hypocrisy. We’re all guilty. Most of us, whether we come to these protests or not, drive cars, or buy single-use plastic, that kind of thing, she shrugs. If you exist on planet Earth, you’re part of the problem. I stopped reading and looked up. The art director was stifling a series of snorts.
Do read the bit, she said, where they list the aristocrats, celebrities, and royals who have donated to the cause.
I scanned farther down the page until the words “environmentalist banker” caught my eye. I read aloud again: It’s a paradoxical for a lot of people, but I dispute that, he says. You can’t convict someone for making money. Money is neutral. It’s what you do with it that counts.
I stopped reading. Money is not neutral, I said finally. How you earn it is just as important as how you spend it. I tried to say more, but my mouth fell open, huffing, useless. The art director, taking in the look on my face, began laughing openly.
If you’re so disgusted with it, my flatmate said in the kitchen later that evening once I had read the article to her, why don’t you go and protest yourself?
It’s different for me, I said. I’m not white. Getting arrested means something different.
She did not look up from the ring she was filing. Have you ever been unfairly targeted by law enforcement before in your life?
No, I said awkwardly. And I don’t plan on it.
Sounds like a cop-out to me, she said. Between your accent and the way you dress, I doubt you’re any more likely to be targeted than I am.
I dress that way for work. And you don’t know that.
Why are you so determined to be discriminated against? You’ve never expressed any kind of strong alliance or BAME concern before—you’re entirely the product of an educated, socially mobile middle class. You were born in the last of the blind glory days. It’s Gen Z who have it rough, not you. You’re one of Blair’s babies.
I’m not, I said, shocked. You should see what it’s like in the office. One of my colleagues is this rich, typically English-looking girl—she’s not even that good-looking, she looks like a chipmunk. She’s terrible at her job. But she’s treated like a daughter by everyone because she has perfect skin, and fits sample size.
Yes, it must be tragic for you as a mere size eight in Levi’s, my flatmate said drily. Having left a cushy job in Oxford and arrived to discover you can’t be accepted by a society magazine.
That’s not what I meant. I’m not looking to be accepted by them, I just think it’s bollocks that she’s more rewarded than I am because she was born one of them.
I know what you meant. No offense though, it’s getting boring hearing you whine about your job while you remain completely oblivious to your own privilege. And having finished the ring, she slipped it onto her finger and held it up to the light. Then she turned her hand to show the gem to me. Can you tell it’s fake?
I looked closely at the ring. Its color was blood orange and bitter. I shook my head. My flatmate nodded. Good. Right. By the way, you owe me £58 for bills and council tax.
Sure, I said.
And another thing. She began washing her hands. I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind taking the sheets off the sofa in the morning like you used to? And putting your stuff away when you’re not home? It’s just that when I work from home, I need the living room.
You make most of your jewelry in the kitchen, I pointed out.
Yes, but I do admin in the living room, she said. Tidy room, tidy mind. Can we keep it tidy, please?
I looked at the chaos in the kitchen: the thin layer of metal filings and dust on the floor and inching towards the kitchen knives. Plastic baggies full of gemstones jostled with the cutting boards, the sink stacked full with cups of graying, milky tea. I thought about the bathroom as I regularly found it, uncleaned and laced with her hair, and as I did so, my eyes moving down saw that the side of my jeans had been blackened by the dust on the kitchen countertop. Across the corridor, I could see the door to my flatmate’s bedroom firmly closed to the dirt produced by every ring she made. I remembered the twee Polaroid photos, fairy lights, and cacti, all dustless; felt a rising irritation. Tidy like the kitchen you keep messing up, or the bathroom you never clean? I asked idly. Her eyes narrowed, but she did not shout. Instead she looked levelly at me.
Did you sleep in my room?
Sorry?
When I was gone for the weekend, I got back and my pillow smelt like your shampoo.
The room went hot; shrank, receded. There was my heartbeat, in my ears; I could hear it making everything small and loud. When I shook my head, I felt like a child. My flatmate narrowed her eyes further.
Right. Just keep your stuff packed up and out of my way when you’re in my flat, okay?
Because a kind of cold war had broken out after the scene in the kitchen, I found any excuse not to come home during sociable hours. I continued going into the office early and stayed late. I bought cheap cinema tickets, or nursed a coffee for four hours in a café and sat bored over a book. At one point, I did go to the ladies’ pond; sat on the banks and admired the magpies darting blue-tailed around them, then grew bored of that as well: I had no inclination to swim in the cold or to get mud in my hair, was too shy of my body to flit naked around the heath. With the time that had elapsed and the little that had changed, I was too embarrassed to call any of the friends who had reached out to me when I had returned to London in the first weeks of June. I took to phoning my mother more often, who accepted the sudden increase in calls with bewildered resentment. But no sooner did she open our conversations with the same gambit—So you remember me now, do you?—than I realized that unlocking my phone, scrolling through my contacts to the letter M, and punching the large green key of a circle with a picture of a phone in the middle was a catastrophic mistake of untold stupidity which could only serve to plunge me into regret: everything she said rang with disgusting amounts of logic and truth. Before calling my mother, I was an unhappy, failing adult. After calling my mother, I was an unhappy, failing child. You really overcomplicate it for yourself, don’t you? she sighed. You’re wasting money living on a sofa and eating Pret A Manger when you could just commute from here. Come. Home.
It’s a two-hour commute.
Sharp breath down the end of the line. It’s an hour and a half, your father does it every weekday, only he does it north. Somehow it hasn’t killed him. I don’t see how it would kill you, it’s the same amount of time you told me you spend walking to work.
I regretted telling her anything about my life, let alone the time it took me to walk to work. These walks were usually the time of day I called her, but now, it was a rainy weekend in mid-October. My flatmate was out to drinks with her friends. I had a lamp on and the sofa swaddled with sheets. The state of the pavements in London is less of a disgrace than the National Rail service, I said sullenly. I don’t want to spend four hours a day on cramped, dirty rush-hour trains that probably don’t even run on schedule. I have other things to do.
You’ve told me you don’t have any friends, my mother pointed out with alacrity. What else do you have to do? This was true, and it hurt. I want to be independent, I burst out. I want to have a life. I don’t want to sit in my childhood bedroom and go to work like a zombie, and then do nothing.
Is that why you’ve been ignoring your father and me?
I kept quiet. I could hear her shrugging over the phone. I stayed with your grandparents until I was ready to get married, she said placidly. It didn’t turn out so badly for me.
It was impossible to let her finish. I had heard this all before. I did not want to get married. I’m not getting married, I told her. I don’t see how I could start an independent life for myself by getting married.
I don’t see how you’re able to save for a mortgage when you’re sitting in cinemas every evening.
Don’t be ridiculous, I snapped. My generation can’t afford mortgages. Anyway, I have to go, I don’t feel well.
She was quick with her concern; asked—What’s wrong? I told her it was possible I was developing anxiety. She withdrew her concern: You don’t have anxiety. I hung up the phone. I resolved, for the umpteenth time that week, not to call her again but it was too late. Not satisfied at the abruptness of the conversation’s end, and now used to being in touch, she rang me. I ignored the call and opened a browser; I took my unhappiness into my own hands. Not my mother dispensing it, but the news instead, the Home Secretary standing at a lectern and declaring an Australian-style, points-based immigration system: This daughter of immigrants needs no lectures from the north London, metropolitan, liberal elite.
I heard the key turning in the door and knocked the switch on the lamp to its off position; hid beneath the sheets. But my phone still issued the Home Secretary’s speech. My flatmate paused incrementally over the sofa on her way to her room to listen. From the corridor:—Wrong news flow. You’re behind. Parliament’s called back again and the Benn Act’s been passed. Before she reached her room, I switched the lamp back on. What else have I missed?
Her voice advanced. The PM sent two letters to Europe today. She came into the room and sat down on the sofa with me. One was an unsigned request for a Brexit extension, and the other was a signed letter arguing against it. She passed her phone to me and let me read an article on the matter myself. I squinted at the brightness of her screen.
Oh, I said. That’s a bit like what happened at work.
She gave me an odd look; asked how so. I reminded her of the article about landed climate change protesters and went on: the picture editor and art director had given the editor of the magazine two final proofs to pick. The first featured photos of one of the protests done by the organizers of the movement—red robes evangelizing on the pavements and road that made up Westminster Bridge. The effect was striking. The organizers had painted their faces white, and even though it could not have been so, in the photos they looked utterly silent: palms extended, red fabric bleeding into red fabric, now swaying gently to lean upon each other, now raising flags above their ranks. It looked more like a fashion shoot than the actual fashion shoot, which had been sent out on the second version of the proof, shot in shades of greige. The landed protesters had refused to wear couture, deeming that it was at odds with their beliefs on the distribution of wealth. My flatmate snorted. Surely agreeing to be photographed for a society magazine was already at odds with a view to distributing wealth? I nodded. Quite. Anyway, they’d hired models instead, with skin airbrushed to the color and texture of apricots. They wore denim and knitwear, were arranged into a human pyramid, looked off into the middle distance. The art director had put her face in her hands when the photo shoot came back. Oh, fucking Christ, she moaned. What the fuck? At which point the picture editor, clearly having anticipated such a result, unearthed the protest photos she had pulled and suggested sending two versions. When the art director kept her head in her hands, the picture editor had printed them out and shoved them between her elbows. Look, she said, we’ll put our signature on the one with the protest photos and send it along with the photo shoot one, and see which one he signs off on.
And? my flatmate asked.
He sent both back, the one with the real photos untouched, the photo shoot one signed.
She looked at the article on her phone again. That’s a bit ridiculous, don’t you think? I didn’t bother to ask which bit she meant and said nothing. I don’t want to put you out, she said finally, but you’re finishing your job at the end of this month anyway and you can’t live on my sofa forever. I’m not exactly happy at the tension it’s been creating over the past couple of weeks.
I nodded. She sighed again.
I’m sorry for being a bit uptight. But I need you to apologize for infringing my personal boundaries too, okay?
I apologized. She patted me on the knee. Don’t worry about bills for this month. Just find somewhere for November onwards, okay?
It was a relief, almost. I let my head loll on the armrest and listened to her tell me about her night: how she’d arrived late because customers wouldn’t leave the bookshop after its closing; how the guy she liked had bought her three pints of Guinness. At some point I fell asleep.
After my last day at work, I took my sheets off the sofa. There had been no fanfare at the office; I had barely needed to say goodbye. Leaving was complicated only by the detritus on my desk. I had accrued mugs, books, boxes of tea, spare shoes in my drawer, umbrellas, hairbands, hand creams, lip balms, and various other beauty freebies that got delivered to the office for magazine staff. Also, energy bars, Band-Aids, wooden chopsticks wrapped in thin, translucent paper, a coin purse with 80p in it, a few reusable plastic bags. It was like moving out of a house in miniature. Emptying my flatmate’s living room of my things was less so.
In the end, I could not say goodbye to her. The election had been announced and she went straight from work to canvassing doorsteps. She left a note: Good luck, please leave the fob and house keys on the dining room table. I texted before I left to ask how it was going and what time she’d be back. Not till late, don’t wait up, was the reply. Canvassing was hard. No one wanted you on their front door. No one wanted a reminder of the state of the nation anywhere near their house unless it was insubstantial, on a screen. Please could I be gone early tomorrow morning, as we’d agreed? She wanted to use her living room as a base for Labour members in her area to strategize. I wrote back, Of course, and began googling the election. I watched a clip from the previous day’s PMQs and struggled to keep up. I read an op-ed in the Times on the leader of the opposition and the fractiousness of his party. I read the prime minister’s Twitter feed. I felt shock at how laborious it was, to be fully up-to-date with the news. I was ostensibly unemployed, but an afternoon of research felt like its own full-time job.
How possible was it to stay willfully attuned without living in permanent fear or guilt? The very phone one kept up-to-speed with existed only by the unheard suffering of others. I read an article which pointed out the fact that any egalitarianism of digital culture rested on the exploitation of Navajo women in early electronic manufacture. I drank a liter of water and read another article on the exploitation of Facebook moderators who watched thousands of hours of traumatizing material to make sure others didn’t. I turned my phone off and put it on the other side of the room. I went into my flatmate’s room and watered her cacti; I thought of all the names for rose breeds I knew, floribunda, grandiflora, rambling, centifolia. I wondered if, to keep on good terms with her in case I ever needed something in the future, there was a hardy enough rose plant I could offer that would survive in the kitchen’s window box. I turned my phone back on in the interest of googling—but the season was all wrong: even the gardening community on Twitter had the election on their mind. A kindly man from Northumberland finally told me the roses weren’t likely to thrive in the cold. I tried to separate the disappointment I felt about this news from the impulse to hate him and logged off. I wanted to think it was exhausting, but on account of the abused workers I had just read about, couldn’t. I called my mother instead. I’m coming back, I said.